The Pinball Machine By Lawrence Cady I watch him just now. He‘s thinking about something. A friend at school, maybe a teacher, maybe his pseudogirlfriend, Faith. He‘s content, though. Pleased about whatever it is he‘s thinking, and as always happens when he‘s like this I can‘t help but watch him out the corner of my eye and think, All's good. All's as it should be. Los Angeles and the urban sprawl it is comes into view as our gondola rounds the very top of the great circle Pacific Park‘s Ferris wheel completes maybe one hundred times a day. LA, the Ferris wheel, neither is important; he is a marvel, a twelve-year-old one of a kind. It is, I‘m thinking once again, just another day at Pacific Park. Just another day. We‘ve been here so many times it might as well be our backyard instead of the down-sloped, rocky hillside that is our backyard behind our—I should say my wife Isabel’s—pretentious mini mansion in Laurel Canyon. That place neither Liam nor I care a whole hell of a lot for, but that‘s okay, that‘s fine. We‘ve got Pacific Park, Paradise Cove, Newport Beach. We‘ve got our little world of contentment all carved out, and I couldn‘t be more pleased with it.
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